Arguing that foreign policy can't be approached by a purely militaristic stance, more than 120 retired generals have signed and sent a letter to congressional leaders prompted by the news that President Trump plans to propose major cuts to foreign aid and diplomacy programs in his upcoming budget.
Even though Defense Secretary James Mattis said during his stint as commander of U.S. Central Command, ‘If you don’t fully fund the State Department, then I need to buy more ammunition,'" President Trump's view is military might far outweighs diplomacy.
From CBS News:
One signer is Marine Gen. John R. Allen, a retired United States Marine Corps four-star general, former top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, and 2014-2015 Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL appointed by President Obama.
“Cutting the State Department budget by 30 percent is consigning us to a generational war. We cannot fight our way out of this. It is an issue which can be decided by decisive diplomacy and enlightened development,” General Allen told CBS News.
“If [the president] wants to eradicate radical Islamic terrorism, his only hope of doing it is not through an interminable war on Islam. It is by funding the very things in the State Department that give us the capacity to work with other countries and to help, in the context of development, to change the human condition in places in the world where young men and women are radicalized by virtue of the social environments they are in. They are pushed into the arms of extremists who we must fight.”
Other prominent generals who signed the letter include former NSA chief Gen. Keith Alexander and former Army Chief of Staff Gen. William Casey.
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